Overflow of Suffering
by Raidne Fern
Summary: Set in Northrend after the events at Light's Hope  after the timeline of the DK manga.  Thassarian responds to Koltira's summons to Mo'aki harbor, after months of no contact between them. Contains slash, rated M for good reason.


Warning:::Contains slash and some semi-graphic sex.

"Hey. Thass."

Thassarian raised his head to look at Koltira, snapping out of the stupor he had entered while gazing into the fire of the small, remote Mo'aki inn at which they had agreed to meet. It was the closest to sleep he could achieve since his forceful initiation into undeath. The use of his old, nearly-forgotten nickname had been just enough to break him away from the hypnotic influence of the rhythmically flickering flames.

He breathed in deeply and stretched, surprised at how stiff he'd become. He realized that he must have been out for some time. He never rested nearly as well in his meager lodgings at Valiance Keep; on the contrary, his face had become even more drawn than usual, his cheeks more gaunt, from restless nights spent roaming the wastes of the tundra outside the Alliance stronghold.

He blinked owlishly at Koltira, still somewhat drowsy. "My sister…my family called me that. Back in Lordaeron."

"Well, I can certainly see why; 'Thassarian' _is_ a mouthful." Koltira smiled at him wryly.

Thassarian snorted. "Right, as if _Koltira_'s much better!"

Unperturbed as always, Koltira instead looked thoughtful. "Hm. Fair enough. My…lover"—he all but visibly winced at the use of the word—"…back at An'owyn…she called me 'Tira'." He paused, seemingly hesitant to continue. "She was my brother's, but I was bedding her. _He_ was the timid one, if you can believe it. But _good_, for all that; good, and loyal." He bowed his head, remembering, and a shadow seemed to pass over his face. "Not like me." He gazed at his hands, knitting his fingers together absently. He looked at Thassarian. "Not so unlike you, now I think back on it. An honorable man. Not overly possessed of undue pride or conceit. A natural follower."

_Follower_. He had stated it without malice or insult, but as a simple fact. Despite the undeniable truth behind it, Thassarian felt a flare of anger hearing it from Koltira. His lightened mood—bolstered by the banter that had always been a welcome and natural part of their friendship—flickered and died like a guttering candle. He seethed.

Noticing Thassarian's conspicuous lack of response, Koltira fell silent, seeming to realize that he had said something amiss.

Since the beginning of this meeting, Thassarian had harbored the uneasy sense that something had shifted between them. They hadn't seen each other since Acherus, when Koltira had abruptly left to find the answers to questions that every newly-freed Knight of the Ebon Blade was asking himself. At Koltira's almost pleading request, delivered within an unexpected letter to Valiance, Thassarian had agreed to meet him. Upon his return to Northrend, he had been mildly surprised that Koltira hadn't contacted him: he therefore had assumed that Koltira must have battled his shadows long enough to have finally subdued them, alone and unaided, as he himself had done so long ago. Koltira's letter had cast doubt upon that assumption, and Thassarian had expected their meeting to involve awkwardly dredging up his own buried demons. But their conversations at the tiny wayward inn had been terse and forced and quickly ended, and entirely unrelated to the horrible shadow-wraiths that every newly-created death knight fought to quell. Koltira seemed somehow uncomfortable; when Thassarian questioned him about his letter, he grew evasive and the effortless, almost arrogant confidence he had retained in undeath seemed to desert him.

After having spent an afternoon of awkward conversation Thassarian was becoming impatient and irritated and, inexplicably, disappointed. What had he expected? It had seemed so long since he had seen Koltira…had he expected exultation, arms thrown around his neck, Koltira pressing his lips against his own? _Yes. __**Yes**_. Thassarian shook himself inwardly, willing the errant thought away. What he _hadn't_ expected was to be needled by the one person he had most wanted to see in all his cold, gray months in Northrend.

And so Thassarian fumed, mulling over the innocuous, probably well-intended comment that had in fact been the most scathing insult anyone could have thrown at him. A sudden, wild urge came upon him to attack Koltira. Or do something else to him. If he had still been capable, he would have reddened visibly. He glared at Koltira instead.

"'_Follower_'…I tore away from Arthas, didn't I?" he snapped. "I'm not the hopelessly naïve soldier out of Lordaeron I was before Falric killed me, nor am I the Lich King's mindless lieutenant. I don't take orders now. From anyone." His lip curled in his fervor; it was all he could do not to snarl.

Koltira's lips parted, eyes widening in surprise at this reaction. "No, Thass, I didn't—I wasn't—"

"And _I _shall _not_ be denied!" Thassarian cut him off, hoping his eyes, boring into Koltira's, wouldn't betray what he was feeling—a mixture of anger and something else he couldn't place. Koltira's continued use of his nickname, so familiar and—presumptuous? No; intimate—was stirring in him something he had thought long dead.

"What shan't you be denied?" Koltira said, softly, solemnly: humoring him. Thassarian averted his gaze; Koltira's eyes had met his with an intensity that made him suddenly uncomfortable and self-conscious and filled with desire.

"My revenge, my power…" Thassarian trailed off. Suddenly, he made up his mind and steeled himself. He looked at Koltira sharply; took in his expectant expression.

"…Anything. I shall not be denied _anything_." He managed to register the elf's satisfied half-smile before his mouth was on Koltira's. He met Thassarian willingly. They crushed against each other almost violently. Their bulky armor was in the way; Thassarian removed it. Dark steel crashed to the floor as they fumbled with straps and buckles, frenzied, hands sliding over cold skin and through hair and across lips. Their gleaming blue eyes burned without heat. Koltira's fel tattoos slid and writhed under his skin like water under ice, glowing fiercely, bathing their faces and bodies in unholy light.

The bed in the Mo'aki inn was tiny, and so, heedless, singularly focused, they sprawled onto the floor.

Unburdened by armor, naked in the blue light, they pressed their skin together. Straddling him, Koltira ground his hips into Thassarian's. Thassarian groaned in response, pulling Koltira's mouth back to his, struggling to remove the breeches separating them. Koltira was panting, his eyes streaming with overflowing necromantic energy. Everything Thassarian had ever felt in undeath, every ounce of pain and suffering and conflict, seemed to flow into his limbs and skin and nerves as he roughly flipped Koltira onto his stomach, forcing him onto his hands and knees, ripping his breeches down, tearing the ties like wheat stalks. Koltira's breathing had become ragged and erratic with lust, his erection dripping into Thassarian's hand as he thrust himself into it. Thassarian's own desire was crushing; he could barely see through the cloud of his suffering. When Koltira begged him, haltingly, to enter him, he thought for a moment that he might actually go mad with the pain and need, but he somehow found him and thrust in with a single smooth motion, crying out in relief as the coiled agony dissipated out into his extremities. Even when killing, when feeling the lifeblood of his victims flowing over his hands and into the channels of his runeblades, feeding upon the suffering and fear around him, he had never felt such release and ecstasy and fulfillment. He bent over Koltira's back, biting his shoulder as he rode him, pumping his hand in time with his hips, drinking in Koltira's gasps and moans and his own pleasure as though he had been dying of thirst.

Neither of them lasted long; when Thassarian felt Koltira shudder and cry out, thrusting reflexively and erratically into his hand, rhythmic pulsing took him over as well and he came, groaning, gripping Koltira's hips and rasping out his name.

Silence and the heady glow from their bodies permeated the room. They lingered for a moment, unspeaking, the only sound their heavy breathing. Thassarian rested his forehead against Koltira's back. Shakily but gently, he untangled himself and drew Koltira into his arms. But Koltira pulled back and hovered over Thassarian, pressing his lips to his collarbone, his chest, the scar from Falric's blade…remembering suddenly, Thassarian snapped his gaze to Koltira's chest and froze, horrified, when he saw it: the scar, gaping, jagged, unevenly-healed, cutting from the top of Koltira's ribcage almost to his navel. The creation scar: the reminder of the exact moment that Thassarian had destroyed Koltira Spellweaver and poured the necromantic power from his runeblade into the ruined body that would become Koltira Deathweaver, his brother-in-arms, his friend, another slave to the Lich King. Another soul doomed, like his. In his blinding frenzy of lust, he had not even noticed or remembered the ghastly shadow of the wound he had inflicted.

Noticing his sharp intake of breath, Koltira sat back on his knees and touched the shiny, hardened scar, examining Thassarian's face in the fading light. "I know," he said quietly, "it took me a long time. I don't expect you forgot it instantly, but it faded, did it not?"

Thassarian's brow furrowed. "The wound? The pain from it?" he asked, confused.

Koltira smiled at him sadly. "No. The anger. The burning rage and agony stemming from the desire to destroy the person who destroyed you, coupled with the inability to raise a single finger against them and the compulsion to follow their every order."

Thassarian stared at him in horror. "Is…is that why? Why you left, why it's taken so long—Gods, I had no idea, Tira, I didn't see—" He took Koltira's arm, gently pulling him in.

"So it _didn't_ happen to you." Try as he did to disguise it, Koltira's voice was laced with bitterness and disappointment. He wrenched his arm from Thassarian's grasp.

"No, and if I _had_ known, I swear, Koltira, I would have left sooner, or helped you, or…"

"…died? Destroyed yourself?" Koltira's blue eyes were still burning, the glow rising from their coupling. They pierced Thassarian like a consecrated knife. "That's all you could have done to help me. It's the reason I had to leave. These tattoos—" he touched one of the flowing, shifting shapes, and it responded, sinuously curving away from his touch, alive with light—"are wounds I inflicted upon myself with my runeblade's energy. It helped me stay sane, channel my pain and rage, see reason, see _you._ I finally convinced myself…that is, I realized…" he cut himself off suddenly, looking at Thassarian.

When he spoke again, his voice was shaky, tentative. "Who did you see when Mograine released us? Your father, wasn't it? He…he told you…that you now had a chance. Did he not? That you could halt the evil that Arthas had manifested? That…that what we were f…forced to do is no longer…important."

Thassarian's eyes were riveted to Koltira's face. He was transfixed. "Yes, how…how did you know this? Did you see someone as well? They told you the same thing my…my father told me?"

Koltira nodded, his expression soft with sympathy.

"I remember your exact words; what you asked me before I left Acherus. You wondered whether the respect and trust we had built was tainted because of the means by which we were brought into being. It was a question that haunted and tormented me, all the way here, through my every cognizant moment, a question that crystallized all the fear and rage and agony I associated with _you_, my…my creator. But I eventually realized, through my haze of suffering, that although you gave me this life, you were also the one who saved me from it."

He looked up at Thassarian, and his blazing eyes were like stars, almost painful to stare into directly. "The reason I knew this…is that at Light's Hope...when that light pierced us, when you spoke with your father, when Darion spoke with _his_ father...

…I saw _you_."

~~||||END||||~~

Author's [long ass] Note: Sooo, this is actually sort of a "Prologue" to my _Andorhal and the New Scourge_ story that began as nothing but unapologetic, right-to-the-point, straight up smutty PORN! Hawt [cold?] awesome Death Knight porn! And it sort of evolved from there into actual canon (or my interpretation of canon, anyway) lore from the DK manga interwoven with in-game canon. Please note that since we don't actually know who, if anyone, Koltira saw at Light's Hope, I've made it so that he saw (pre-DK; that is, living-human-from-Lordaeron) Thassarian. This story is, for the purposes of my current story, the first time Thass 'n' Tira FORGED THEIR RUNEBLADES, IF YA KNOW WHAT I MEAN!...Ahem. Do please forgive me. And please enjoy/review/critique! Also please excuse and feel free to point out any glaring errors; I've been typing this chapter from about 3 to 6 a.m. and am therefore a wee bit loopy.


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